In his ode To Autumn, John Keats introduced the by now somewhat over-worked phrase “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”. In the poem he bangs on about apples, hazels and “later flowers for bees”, but he could also have mentioned the fungi which push up their fruiting bodies in such profusion at this time of year. Granted, it’s hard to come up with a rhyme for fungi, but he could perhaps have had a crack at fungus. Here’s an example of one I found on School Common earlier in the week. I believe it to be a Shaggy Parasol.
And then there are spiders. Judging by the many inhabitants of my house, this seems to have been a particularly fruitful year to be a spider, but once again back in 1819 JK didn’t think to mention them. I don’t presume to tell him his trade, but he did mention cider in the poem, so there’s a ready-made rhyme there. This cracking Garden Spider image comes to us courtesy of Team Leader Margaret.
There seems
to me to be a huge number of acorns this year, much to the delight of Jays no
doubt. They have a special pouch in their throats, the better to stuff in as
many acorns as they can, like us playing “Chubby Bunny” with marshmallows in
sillier times. I don’t know who declares a year where there is a surfeit of nuts
as a “mast year”, but I wouldn’t mind betting 2025 will qualify. I have read
that when trees are weather-stressed, as they must have been this year, they
drop their leaves early and over-produce their seeds. The theory is that in
this way, should the tree die there’s a good chance of many more successors
coming along when conditions are more favourable.
Our
fair-weather friends, the economic migrants of summer have mostly left us now,
seeking insect prey further south. I have seen no swallows or house martins for
a couple of weeks now, although some might still be clinging on somewhere. We’re
still getting some warm and sunny days, and then the ivy flowers are buzzing
with loads of wasps and Ivy bees – I had an exciting close view
of a hornet the other day, although it declined
to have its portrait taken – and I respected that. Most butterflies are now
resting in one life-phase or another, and in short, the impression is of a
general shut-down. Soon however the skies should be full of incoming geese,
yapping like a pack of puppies (I have already seen a few), while the winter
thrushes arrive to take the place of the missing songbirds.
Amongst all
that change, one constant is the efforts made by our volunteers to keep the Southrepps
Commons in good order, and to that end 10 of us arrived on schedule this
morning. We were in for a shock: for a long time now we have relied on there
being a winch to haul the laden drag sheets to the dumping sites, but this week
the bad news imparted to us by Team Leaders Julie and Kevin was that it wasn’t
there. They had looked high and low in the storage container, leaving no corner
un-explored, but we were definitely deficient in the winch department to the
tune of one. We can only hope it’s back next time.
So we had to revert to the old way of working from many years ago, when we were all many years younger, fitter and perhaps even stronger. That is, hauling the blessed sheets a long way across uneven ground.
And then you get some ladies on the pull!
Thankfully, the material we were shifting had been cut two or more weeks ago and the general lack of rain meant that it was not sodden. By only lightly loading the sheets the job was manageable, and we found a rhythm so that sometimes full ones were crossing with recently emptied ones.
As last time, the unloading had to be done somewhere where wasps weren’t, cutting down the options, so we returned to the already prodigious heap from our previous visit. That meant heaving the sheets to the summit, with a lot of effort.
Once this became impossible without oxygen at the advance camps, Noel, the winchman without a winch to man, remained at the foot of the mountain, in order to pitchfork the stuff dumped at base camp.
Nonetheless, there were slack times when he was able to take his ease; despite appearances, he declared the wheelbarrow to be his seat of choice on these occasions.
The half-time break came, and not before time we felt. The select band gathered round in a bunch so tight you could have thrown a blanket over the lot – but no blankets were on hand, and a heavy wet tarpaulin seemed unsporting.
Once again,
Nina produced her now famous apple cake, to general acclaim. I had never eaten
an apple cake until six weeks ago; now I count it as part of my staple diet.
While we
were all together, we were shocked to be told about a very unpleasant incident
that took place yesterday at the children’s play area at the Recreation Ground.
A woman on official business was assaulted by persons unknown, objecting to her
doing her job, but we must hope that the two perpetrators are identified and
brought to justice.
Suitably refreshed, we returned to the fray, keeping a neat defensive line such as Norwich City could do well to emulate.
The plan was to keep within a defined area, bounded by two telegraph poles, but Team Leader Kevin (henceforth to be known as ‘Team Leader Mission Creep Kevin’ strayed outside the area (much like the aforementioned footy team).
He’s clearly using a pitchfork in that photo, but went on to employ a rake too. Not such a thrilling revelation you might justifiably feel, but the point about it is that come the time to pack up our trolleys and leave, Mission Creep, perhaps with a pang of conscience, asked where the rake was. He was sent back to that area outside the area, and to his great joy was able to triumphantly hold the missing tool aloft.
Before you can cart the tools away, you must fold the sheets, and this is not a job to be undertaken ill advisedly or recklessly. We therefore leave it to the experts.
Just as we were about to leave, we were visited by that feline legend of Southrepps, the famous Nacho.
It wasn’t clear whether he approved of our efforts, but we don’t see why he wouldn’t, as this is how the site looked when we finished. We certainly felt that without the aid of the winch we had put in quite a shift!
You might wonder what music was discussed this week. Andrew asked us a good quiz question, which was to list the five members of the Travelling Wilburys. Four were easy, but the fifth set us pondering. Eventually Jeff Lynne’s (via Jeff Wayne) name popped up, and we moved on to debating the best Eagles tracks, as there had been a recent programme about that band.
Here is Team
Leader Julie’s message of thanks:
Hello all
Thank you
to the ten volunteers who turned out today to help us clear more of the fen
area on the Warren Road end of the site. More importantly, thank you to all of
you for staying when we had to announce that we had not got a winch to use!
Everyone just rolled up their sleeves and part filled the sheets and dragged
the sheets to the dump site, followed by much clambering up the heap to pull
the raked material up. An absolutely brilliant effort from everyone. Luckily we were re-fuelled at the half time
break by tea/coffee and apple cake (thanks to Kevin, Linda and Nina).
We will
be back on the common in two weeks’ time (hopefully with the winch!).
Regards, Julie and the TLs
We often refer to the “Chadwick bench” as a rendezvous point for work parties. It was put there by their family as a memorial to Alan and Muriel Chadwick and had begun to deteriorate. It’s good to see that it has been replaced with a smart new one, which is sure to be well used by many grateful walkers in its ideal spot for a breather and taking in the view across the flower-rich central area of the Common.
With the death of Dame Jane Goodall, a beacon of light for the natural world has gone out. She was of course mainly known for her work revealing the extremely close affinity between Chimpanzees and Humans, but she also cared deeply for every organism, including ourselves, in that incalculably complicated system of life – the original World-wide Web. She remained hopeful that if we all did our own little bit by changing our ways and bringing pressure to bear on the governments and corporations which hold the future in their hands, cumulatively we could, just possibly, halt the destruction of the natural world and all that that entails, and thus avert catastrophe. She was a compassionate activist, caring not only about the terrible loss of biodiversity around the world, but also its impact on our own species. Her aim was to promote harmony between humanity and the natural world, and part of her formidable legacy is “Roots and Shoots”, which in turn is part of the Jane Goodall Institute. According to their website, it “nurtures young minds and hands to build a sustainable future through community-led conservation actions”; no bad thing, I’d say.
